Tuesday, 29 July 2014

Abbazia di Praglia

We
got a parcel today.

On
June 26th (today – as you see – is July 29th) we placed
an order for some shampoo and soap and body moisturisers – and then we waited .
. .and waited . . . and emailed to
check they got our order okay . . . and waited. . . and today it arrived.

And
oh, my goodness!

You
never – I assure you, never – sniffed
such glorious beautiful fragrances as these. I mean, they are the real thing. I
have a good nose for discerning authentic floral/herbal/essential oil
ingredients from cheap laboratory crap – and these are the real deal. So worth
waiting for.

They
aren’t terribly expensive, and they have the classiest packaging ever. These
products are just stunning.

They
came from the Abbazia di Praglia (in English that’s Praglia Abbey).

Praglia
Abbey is a Benedictine monastery, at the foot of Mount Lonzina, in Padua. It
was founded in the eleventh century and is still going with a community of 44
monks after the usual long history of ups and downs, closures and renewals. It
houses the National Library – an Italian national monument – and has a
tradition of book restoration.

At
this abbey, they cultivate plants to make cosmetics, and for honey and wine. And
their stuff is heavenly.

It
just lifts my heart to think of our soap and shampoo being made with slow care
and faith and excellence, in the Italian countryside, by men for whom prayer is
work and work is prayer, in the beautiful way of St Benedict.

Their
website and most of the info about them online is all in Italian, so you may
need an online translation tool to help you understand it all.

There's a virtual tour of the abbey here (you click on the arrows to go through the doors to a different area).

You
can see the abbey, with the flowers they cultivate for their products, and the daily life of the monks, in their YouTube video here.

And I only wish I had some way of letting you smell the fragrance of the propolis cream on the back of my right hand and the foot cream on the back of my left hand. Mmmmm . . . Well, bless my soul - that's just glorious!

[English readers may like to know, we first came across the Abbazia di Praglia's products in Devon - Buckfast Abbey has a shop where they sell goods produced by lots of different monastic communities; all of a very high standard. Some - but I think, not all - of their range is online: here]

9 comments:

Did you know it would be fatal to say you can find "this" here and if you click here you can find so many other things. Well half an hour later ....or perhaps more I drooled over the various things the Abbaye and Buckfast Abbey had to sell and viewed the monks......and gosh is it lunch time already!

Ah - 'propolis' - Greek word, means 'for the city' (as in, 'defender of the city'). It's what bees make to protect the hive - their city. It's anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and anti-viral. It smells like incense and will cure almost anything. Bees! We'd be lost without them.

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An Inspiration

‘Let us pass through your country. We will stay on the main road; we will not turn aside to the right or to the left. Sell us food to eat and water to drink for their price in silver. Only let us pass through on foot until we cross the Jordan into the land the Lord our God is giving us.’

(Deuteronomy 2.27-28, 29b NIV UK)

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